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SD Adapter For Dreamcast Released
YokimaSun writes "The Dreamcast was the last console by Sega that had innovations that today's consoles have taken on board, i.e. broadband online gaming and innovative gaming controllers (such as the fishing controller). The console still lives on today, thanks to the support of the homebrew community that still churns out games and emulators and also the odd commercial release for the console by independent developers. Today the spark has been ignited by the fascinating release of an SD adapter for the Dreamcast that allows homebrew games to be played without the need to burn to disc. It's time to dust off those Dreamcast consoles and get back into free gaming. The same company have also released a Dreamcast modified with VGA support and a front-loading SD slot and its own BIOS. Awesome to relive some of those Dreamcast classics."
Dreamcast came stock with a 56k but there was a rare "broadband adapter" that would swap the 56k for an ethernet socket. They are probably still a pretty hot item on ebay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcast_Broadband_Adapter
The inclusion of the modem at least brought /online/ gaming to consoles if not broadband gaming. They did make a not-widely-available Ethernet interface for it, however.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcast_Broadband_Adapter
"The same company have also released a Dreamcast modified with VGA support"
The Dreamcast always has had VGA support.
Dreamcast VGA
This is very interesting news. I used to write homebrew for the Dreamcast but my poor unit broke down. Poor laser went bad. Never did get another one. If this pans out, I may need to pick up myself another unit. Always did love the Dreamcast.
FWIW the SD card modification was invented back in 2008 by a Japanese guy here:
http://f17.aaa.livedoor.jp/~takotako/dcserial_ft232bm.php#sdcard
It's an internal mod as the serial port connector is very hard to come by. All this company did was make an external version and package it with (I'm assuming) a CD-R packed with emulators and ROMs without the respective author's permission.
It's a cool product, but it would have been cooler if the original guy who did the hardware hack (and the emulator authors who are getting ripped off) could somehow have been compensated for their hard work which made this product possible.
I know I'm dreaming, console products out of China are all rip-offs so they have zero R&D expenses.
This is based off a free mod from this site
I still think the Dreamcast controllers were the worst ever produced. Worse than the GameCube controllers, and worse than the N64 controllers.
Why? None of those is perfect, but they're not too bad either. The Playstation's controller, on the other hand, is a complete, intolerable piece of junk.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I know I'll get downmodded for this by someone, but hopefully, calmer heads can even the odds. I actually LIKED the Dreamcast controller, as it was quite comfortable for me to use, and honestly seemed to make sense to me, overall. It was actually better than the stock controller for the original XBox, in my opinion, although Madcats made a smaller XBox controller that was much better by comparison. Gamecube controllers were about equal for my taste, and the God-awful abomination that was the N64 controller was, bar none, absolutely the WORST controller I have ever had the misfortune of having inflicted upon me during my entire gaming history, which, incidentally, goes as far back as Telstar's Pong console, which was, itself, pretty awful. If there was anything that could have been added/ changed on the Dreamcast controller to improve it, I would've suggested a) making the stock controller wireless with rechargeable batteries built in (like the Sixaxis for the PS3), and b) adding two additional shoulder buttons just above the trigger buttons. Maybe skewing the 4-button diagonal array on the right hand side clockwise by about 5 degrees would have been nice, but not really necessary, and moving the analog stick to the right and up ever so slightly would have made it ideal for me.
As for the VMU? Just seemed like a waste of an LCD screen to me, a simple memory card would have done the job just as well for a whole lot less, and the concept of playing minigames on the VMU just seemed utterly pointless and idiotic to me. Of course, my VMU never did function as anything other than a memory card for me, the other functions seemed non functional, perhaps I had a defective unit?
Yeah, homebrew classics like Soul Calibur, Shenmue, Jet Grind Radio, Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi, Virtua Tennis & Tennis 2K2, Skies of Arcadia, Power Stone & Power Stone 2, Sonic Adventure & Sonic Adventure 2, Samba De Amigo, Virtua Fighter 3TB, Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future, Chu Chu Rocket!, Phantasy Star Online, Street Fighter 3:Third Strike and other Fighters, Ikaruga and other Shmups. Oh wait, those are all commercial games. If you had them already, why would you take the time to transfer them to SD, when you could just put the disc in and play immediately?